Thursday, October 18, 2012

It’s
a perfectly beautiful fall day in New York, but I’m dreaming of cold, damp
Venice and a December visit to the Libreria Aqua Alta.

Located on the Calle Lunga Santa Maria Formosa in the Castello district, the store can be reached either on foot or by boat. Alta Acqua Libreria translates to "High Water Bookstore."

Books are arranged on raised shelves, in tubs, and in
the gondola pictured, to avoid damage during flooding.

Tourists and Venetians browsing.

One of the resident cats.

A closer look--with the owner of the shop
in the background.

You can find out a bit more about the store here and Michelle has posted a
lovely story about one of the owner’s kittens who needed rescuing from a nearby
building. I think it may be the same cat pictured above. More pretty pictures can be viewed at the store's facebook page.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Banned
Books Week started yesterday and continues through October 6. Co-chair of the
celebration, Bill Moyers, describes his connection with books and the importance of universal access to them in
this short and persuasive video.

In
it, Moyers talks about the first books he borrowed from his local library and
about being a freshman in college and his elation at seeing the school’s library
for the first time. He was so impressed and
inspired he considered majoring in library science so that “[he] could be near
all those books.” He goes on to talk about why it’s so important to fight this
form of censorship.

Moyers’
video is viewable on a youtube channel dedicated to the subject as part of a
Virtual Read-Out. You can read a passage from a banned book and record it for
broadcast here or just see what choices other supporters of the event have
chosen to read.

I
particularly enjoyed the passage from the Great Gatsby read by Christine Hadlow
at the Missoula public library in Montana. The language in the scene in which
Nick becomes reacquainted with Daisy and meets Jordan for the first time may be
even more affecting when read aloud than when read silently.

Banned Books Week is the national book
community's annual celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries
and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship
by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events. The
2012 celebration of Banned Books Week will be held from September 30 through
October 6. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge
in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More
than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982. For more information on
Banned Books Week, click here.

According to the
American Library Association, there were 326 challenges reported to the Office
of Intellectual Freedom in 2011, and many more go unreported. The 10 most
challenged titles of 2011* were:

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series) by Lauren Myracle

2. The Color of Earth (series) by Kim Dong Hwa 3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins 4. My Mom's Having A Baby! A Kid's Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy by Dori Hillestad Butler5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie6. Alice (series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor 7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley8. What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones 9. Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily Von Ziegesar 10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

10.

It’s
startling to see a list where the Gossip
Girl series sits side-by-side with To
Kill aMockingbird, but of course
I think readers should be able to read either one if they wish to. Moreover, I
don’t think reason is the strong suit of those who would impose their morality
or politics on the global community of readers.